Many types of electronic items are available over computer networks, such as the Internet. Such items include, for example, web pages, bookmarks, tags, digital images, digital videos, etc.
Many users are interested in knowing what items are interesting to other users. Users may demonstrate an interest in an item in a variety of ways. An action that demonstrates an interest in an item is referred to herein as an interest-action.
The interest-actions that are performed by users to indicate an interest in an item often vary based on the nature of the item in which they are interested. For example, users may demonstrate an interest in a web page by retrieving the web page, following a link to the web page, creating pages that include links to the web page, bookmarking the web page, etc. As another example, users may demonstrate an interest in a tag by tagging other items (such as web pages, photos, videos) with the tag. With respect to videos, users may demonstrate an interest by following links to the videos, playing the videos or downloading the videos. These are merely some examples of the various items in which a user may be interested, and the types of ways that interests may be demonstrated.
The degree to which all users have demonstrated interest in an item is generally referred to herein as the popularity of the item. The popularity of an item may be determined by counting how many interest-actions are performed relative to the item. Once the popularity of an item has been determined, the popularity may be used as a factor in a variety of contexts. For example, a search engine may use the popularity of items as a factor in determining how to rank search results that list the items.
In addition to knowing what items are popular among the community as a whole, some users are particularly interested in knowing what items are interesting to other users that share their particular interests. To allow users to see what items are interesting to other users that share their particular interests, some systems allow users to establish a personal social network, and provide a mechanism that allows the users to see what items are interesting to other members of their personal social network.
For example, some systems allow users to designate other users as “friends”, and to see lists of items on which their friends have performed interest-actions. For example, in the context of web pages, the systems may allow users to see a list of the web pages that their friends have bookmarked. In the context of tags, the systems may allow users to see a list of tags that their friends have generated, or a list of items that their friends have tagged.
A mechanism that allows a user to see those items in which “friends” are interested is particularly valuable to a user that has many friends that have similar interests to the user. However, if a user has designated few or no friends, and/or the user's designated friends do not share the same interests as the user, then such a mechanism has little value. It would be helpful to provide such “less connected” users with information about items that are interesting to other users with similar interests, even though the less connected users may not actually know who those other users may be.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.